I would like to recommend a product that meets my contact’s needs AND complies with my company’s policy.

The difficulty in recommending a product is that dozens of criteria have to be taken into account. First of all, you have to consider the technical criteria expressed by your interlocutor. They may mention the risks they face, the standards they must comply with, and a wide range of other constraints specific to their activity. You should also consider the constraints imposed by your own company, such as recommending products that comply with its policy, are available and validated.

We will see here how to recommend a product that meets your contact’s needs while complying with your company’s policy.

Let’s first carry out a technical search based on the customer’s needs.

📷 Guided search

Once the search is complete, we can get an overview of all products that technically meet the customer’s needs. Let’s now make a selection. Your organisation may have sorted the products based on criteria it wishes to favour, such as:

- Is the glove part of our company’s official selection? (Range / Sales plan / Official catalogue)

- Is it available? (Inventory plan / Store availability)

- Is the supplier one of our partners?

- Do we have favourable financial terms for this product? (Price / Margin)

Let’s see what this means for our RED distributor:

Our current search - glove waterproof on the fist with a good grip in oil, no need for cut or cold protection - returns 32 possible products. As an employee of the RED company, what should we recommend in order to achieve our company’s goals?

Let’s access the entity of fictitious distributor “RED”, where the gloves are ranked in order of priority.

As a reminder, RED only stores red gloves. It tolerates orange gloves, which it puts on its sales plan but doesn’t store.

Here’s the preference ranking:

•        A: red gloves, preferred since they are in stock.
•        B: orange gloves, not stored but featured in the sales plan.
•        C: remaining products on the market, which should not be favoured.

Not only did we identify the products that meet our customer’s needs, but we also outlined those that best comply with our company’s policy!